Briefly: What you missed over the summer

Reserve Officers’ Training Corps will return to campus in the fall of 2012 after a nearly 40-year absence. Both students from Yale and other Connecticut colleges and universities will have the opportunity to join the new Naval ROTC program.

“I’m delighted to have Navy ROTC return to Yale after a long hiatus,” Yale College Dean Mary Miller told the News in May after the program was announced. “This agreement marks a new day for Yale.”

The announcement followed over a semester of negotiations between administrators and the military after Congress voted to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell” — the policy prohibiting gay and lesbian armed forces members from serving openly — in December 2010. In early May, the Yale College Faculty removed the final obstacles to the return of ROTC by voting to discard four resolutions that had led to ROTC’s departure.

The new program will be the only Naval ROTC program in the state.

—David Burt

MURDERER OF YALE STUDENT SENTENCED

Raymond Clark III, the man convicted of the murder and sexual assault of Annie Le GRD ’13, was sentenced to 44 years in prison in June. Clark’s sentence came almost 21 months after he killed Le on Sept. 8, 2009, in 10 Amistad St., the research building where they both worked.

A doctoral student at the Department of Pharmacology, Le was first reported missing on Sept. 8, 2009. Her body was found by police behind a wall in the basement of 10 Amistad St. five days later — the day she was to be married. DNA, keycard and video evidence eventually led federal, state and local police investigators to Clark, a lab technician who worked in the building. Though he initially pled not guilty to charges of murder and felony murder, Clark changed his plea to guilty this past March as part of a plea bargain.

—Everett Rosenfeld

NEW DAVENPORT DEAN MOVES IN

A month after after Craig Harwood GRD ’02 announced his departure from Davenport College deanship at the end of July, Yale College Dean Mary Miller reported she had appointed Ryan André Brasseaux GRD ’08 as the next dean of Davenport. A Louisiana native and a University of Louisiana at Lafayette alum, Brasseaux is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in American studies at Yale, which Miller said he expects to earn in December. Brasseaux has served as a teaching fellow in Yale courses and taught a self-designed American studies class on the Gulf Coast last spring. He will also carry on Harwood’s legacy as a musical Davenport dean: he plays percussion and slide guitar. Brasseaux’s wife, Jessika Brasseaux NUR ’14, their children, 7-year-old Anne Elise and 5-year-old Joseph Emile, and their golden retriever Marley have also moved into the dean’s suite.

—Jordi Gassó

YALE CORPORATION HEAD NAMED

The University announced in June that Edward P. Bass ’67 ARC ’72 will replace Roland Betts ’68 as Senior Fellow of the Yale Corporation. A successor trustee of the Corporation since 2001 and co-chairman of the Yale Tomorrow fundraising campaign, Bass will serve as the head of the board for his two remaining years as a corporation member. As Senior Fellow, Bass will work with University President Richard Levin to set the corporations’s agenda, as well as preside over the board in Levin’s absence. “All who love Yale should be delighted, as I am, that [Bass] is willing to serve as Senior Fellow for the last two years of his term on the Yale Corporation,” Levin said. Bass’ donations have helped found the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies and a Distinguished Visiting Environmental Scholars Program in his name.